Arizona Republic from Phoenix, Arizona • Page 35

ARTS ENTERTAINMENT SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2010 AE5 THE ARIZONA BEPUBUC I ''iff 'A' f-Va Flashback: Blossoms' biggest hits By td Muky Tmi Arizona Rirviuc Here's look back at a handful of the hits that made the Gin Blossoms such a big part of the radio landscape in the '90s. 'Hey Jealousy' A raucous rerecording of a song the Tempe rockers already had featured on their indie-label debut, "Dusted." this jangle-rock anthem rode heavy distorted guitars and an unmistakable air of futility to No. 4 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Tracks in post-Nirvana 1993, by which time guitarist Doug Hopkins, who wrote it had been fired for acting a little too much like the guy in the lyrics. The opening line, for instance, has lead singer Robin Wilson singing, "Well, tell me, do you think ifd be all right if I could just crash here tonight? You can see I'm in no shape for driving. And anyway, I've got no place to go." The best line, though, is, "If you don't expect too much from me, you might not be let down." A photo of the Gin Blossoms circa 1989 shows the Temp band's original lineup (from left): Jesse Valenzuela, (standing), Bill leen and Philip Rhoades.

Hopkins died in 1993. Band is rebuilding the THt ARIZONA RtfUBllC Doug Hopkins, Robin Wilson brand ft .4 DEIRDRE HAMIILTHE ARIZONA REPUBIIC Robin Wilson and the Gin Blossoms performed at Scottsdale's Ultimate Block Party on New Year's Eve in 2008. son, a Tempe-scene veteran who signed on when I lopkins was fired. "I think maybe we were still under the fatigue of three years on the road supporting the first record. Then, we had a little break going into the studio and everything was fine.

But when we went back out that summer, it turned into work. It wasn't just sitting around in the studio being rock stars. It was state fairs, county fairs. And it started that process of 'This isn't So Robin said 'OK, I'm going to do my own and that was pretty much it' Wilson (or "the man who shot the golden goose," as he has been called) and drummer Phillip Rhodes went off to form the Gas Giants while Johnson joined former Refreshment Roger Clyne in the Peacemakers, Valenzuela formed the short-lived Low Watts and started to focus more on writing songs, and Bill Leen stopped playing music altogether to open a bookstore. But eventually, they drifted back together, playing New Year's Eve to usher in the new millennium in downtown Phoenix, which led to talk of a reunion tour.

And as Johnson says, at that point, "it just seemed like, well, why don't we just be a real band again, write new music and do gigs like normal bands do?" It takes more planning now, with Valenzuela living in Los Angeles and Wilson spending most of his time on Long Island, N.Y., with his wife (who works as a stage manager on "Saturday Night and their 8-year-old soa But the Gin Blossoms manage. And ifs definitely worth their while. As Wilson explains with a laugh, "There's a huge jump in the reaction of people when you're checking in at the hotel between 'Oh, we're the Gin Blossoms' and 'I used to be in the Gin you know? Instantly, people were hiring us to do rock shows from the moment we got back together." 'Back to that table' If they'd stayed together, Wilson figures they'd be on the level of '90s rock veterans the Goo Goo Dolls, whose latest album hit the charts at No. 7, or even Train. Johnson says he has learned to keep that sort of thing "at arm's length," preferring to focus on the task at hand, creating music without over-thinking the outcome.

But Wilson's too driven for that. "I've been using Train as an example," he says. "We have some things in common in terms of our career path, but it remains to be seen whether of not we can get that level of airplay. I believe that the material is good enough to warrant it, but whether we are still allowed to sit at that table is the question." Wilson laughs, but he's not kidding. "I'm willing to do whatever it takes," he says, "to get back to that table." Reach the reporter at ed.masleyarizonarepublic.com or 602-444-449S.

GIN BLOSSOMS Continued from AEI They weren't just big, they were ubiquitous. Unless you avoided all contact with radio stations that even flirted with new music by guitar-rock artists in the '90s, you would know at least a handful of their bigger hits. Calling "No Chocolate Cake" "the most solid batch of materia that we've delivered since 'New Miserable the singer says, "I'm reallv confident that there's a handful of tunes in there that could propel the band a little bit forward. If we succeed a little bit commercially, we'll be able to do more of the kind of shows we want to do." Selling records would be nice, too. But he's more concerned with "brand awareness." "If we had stayed with and never broken up, we would have been shooting for a half a million to a million records every time," he says.

At this point, though, "anything around 100,000 records sold, for us, would be a smash and probably beyond what we could reach." He's pretty sure they have a decent shot at outselling their previous effort Released in 2006 on a small indie label called Hybrid Recordings, "Major Lodge Victory" has sold 35,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan just more than 5 percent of what their final major-label album sold before the breakup. "As a tool to market the band, it didn't really accomplish much," Wilson says with a laugh. "So yeah, I'm disappointed, sure. But this is a better record than that" A climb ahead And not just better but more likely to succeed, an outlook Wilson shares with guitarist Scott Johnson, who likes to look at what they're going through as "a rebuilding process." Also sharing that assessment is Jennifer Bonita, who's running the project at 429 Records in Santa Monica, Calif. "We're over the moon with this," say Bonita, the label's marketing manager.

"On any given day, you can hear the Gin Blossoms playing on the radio. And their touring schedule has been really lively the past couple years. We've had great feedback with the Hot AC campaign, and retail is looking almost better than expected. "Even though they've been a little bit absent from the recording space, they haven't been all that absent from people's minds. On any given day, there are people talking about the Gin Blossoms on Twitter, which is pretty crazy, considering Twitter is obviously relatively new compared to how long the Gin Blossoms have been around." That lingering connection with the fans is why, as much as Wilson may envy bands 'Found Out About You' The second single from "New Miserable Experience" to go Top 40 on the Hot 100 (peaking at No.

25, as did "Hey Hopkins "Found Out About You" is a moodier, almost psychedelic rocker with obvious roots in early R.E.M. There's a bittersweet vibe to the opening line, with echoes of the Beach Boys' "Girl Don't Tell Me," but the tone gets angrier and more accusing as the song goes on love I thought I'd won you give for free," for instance). By the time this single, also previously featured on "Dusted," topped the Modern Rock charts, Hopkins had committed suicide. 'Til I Hear It From You' Written by Wilson, Jesse Valenzuela and power-pop icon Marshall Crenshaw, this track from the soundtrack to the 1995 film "Empire Records" jangles more than either of the band's breakthrough singles, hitting No. 9 on Billboard's Hot 100 while cracking the Top 5 on the Mainstream Rock and Modern Rock charts.

The lyrics are a bit more optimistic than the Hopkins-written hits, but ifs only because the singer won't admit his girl is moving on until he hears it from her. The opening line "I didn't ask; they shouldn't have told me" tells you everything you need to know while keeping it brief enough for Twitter. 'Follow You Down' A crunching guitar rocker cut from the same cloth as "Hey Jealousy" and credited to all five members of the band, their second song to peak at No. 9 on Billboard's Hot 100 threw in an infectious blast of Beatlesque blues harp (as the Bluebells would have played it). And the words find them setting their sights once again on dysfunctional romance, Wilson shrugging it off with, "Are they gonna find us lying face down in the what the hell now, we've already been forever damned." title said it all, "Up and Crumbling." By 1992, they'd decided to fire Hopkins, who'd written both the album's biggest hits, because his drinking had made him unmanageable.

Released in August 1992, "New Miserable Experience" was not an overnight success. It took nearly a year, in fact for the bittersweet jangle-rock crunch of "Hey Jealousy" to go Top 40, hitting No. 25 and doing even better on the Mainstream Rock chart By the time a second Hopkins-written rocker, "Found Out About You," topped Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks chart, Hopkins was dead. "It's sad as hell," Wilson says. "It makes me so angry to think about the amount of untapped potential in that man and what he could have accomplished, what our band could have accomplished.

People loved him. He was as quotable as David Lee Roth, as irritable as Noel Gallagher, as good a songwriter as Paul Westerberg. "But 10 hours of travel for every hour onstage, there's no way no way Doug would have done that, absolutely no way he would have conducted himself like a grown professional and gotten on the plane. Eventually, we would have been in a place where we had someone we were paying $100,000 a year to throw Doug in a car every day. It would have been this constant grenade we were juggling.

"I'd love to imagine a Doug who could have gotten past all that" Wilson pauses, then adds, "But I can't And if heartbreaking." Apart and together Had Hopkins been their only writer, the Gin Blossoms story would have ended there. But Wilson and guitarist Jesse Valenzuela both contributed hit singles to that album. And the hits kept coming after Hopkins' death, including two Top 10 appearances on Billboard's Hot 100 the 15th biggest song of 1995, "Til I Hear It From You," and the 15th biggest song of 1996, "Follow You Down." The release of a follow-up album, "Congratulations I'm Sorry," meant more touring, though, and thaf when things began to sour. "Nobody wanted to go back on the road," says Scott John with higher profiles, he says he still feels pretty lucky to be where he is today. "If real important that you understand this," he says.

"I don't want to come off for a second like I'm angry about where we're at I just want to succeed, you know? When we do shows with Hootie and the Blowfish and I see their wardrobe cases backstage, that's the kind of crap I get jealous about Not that I want a case full of clothes. I just want to operate at that level. And I think we're capable of getting there." Howard Kramer, curato rial director of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, says the prospect of the Gin Blossoms "getting there" is certainly possible. Although he feels the odds are stacked against the band, Kramer points to Train, which staged a major comeback in 2009 with the four-times-platinum single "Hey Soul Sister" eight years down the road from their previous Top 5 entry, as a sign that it could happen with the right song in the right place at the right time. "That single was in a commercial, and people went nuts," he says.

"It couldn't have gone any better for those guys." And this wouldn't be the toughest obstacle the Gin Blossoms have faced, Kramer says, referring to the suicide of their guitarist just as the single he'd written before they fired him was taking off. "If they can weather the death of Doug Hopkins, they're doing OK," Kramer says. "That was an incredibly difficult thing to do, and yet they continued to flourish." Tragic past The Gin Blossoms formed in 1987, dropped an independent album, "Dusted," two years later, signed to in 1990 and entered Ardent Studios in Memphis to begin work on "New Miserable Experience" that same year. And it truly was a miserable experience. At one point the sessions were going so badly, they gave up on making an album and instead recorded an EP whose.